FringeHog Friday Five

Synthetic Biology: Creating Lego’s of Life?

Most of us are familiar with Lego’s, the brightly colored plastic interchangeable bricks that serve as platforms to build models. Lego’s interchangeability is one of its most potent features. You can mix your Jedi Starfighter^TM with Hyperdrive Booster Ring bricks and your Skeleton Tower bricks to create something completely unique. The key is interchangeability.?

What if DNA could be interchanged like Lego bricks and instead of creating unique plastic models these Lego’s of life could be used to design and construct new biological entities? This isn’t a “what if”.Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline that aims to do just that, design and construct new biological entities.?

One of the heavy hitters in this emerging field is Jay Keasling. He’s using synthetic biology to create inexpensive, effective, anti-malarial drugs. His work is funded in part by the Gates Foundation. No one can describe this project better than Dr. Keasling and if you want to find out more listen to his talk during a recent PARC Forum.

Another advocate of synthetic biology is Dr Drew Endy.Endy sees synthetic biology as a way to re-create biology from an engineering perspective. Endy says, “Synthetic biology means leveraging natural structures as a way of building things on the molecular scale”. One of Endy’sgoals is to create shortcuts so that non-biologists can build things cheaper, faster and easier. This desire led him to Tom Knight, an MIT professorwho had the idea to use pieces of DNA like Lego bricks and coined the term biobricks to describe standard interchangeable genetic components.

Endy is furthering his goal of making it faster, easier and cheaper to build new biological entities by creating a public catalog, The Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Many students who compete in the International Genetically Engineered Machine, an undergraduate synthetic Biology competition begin their projects with biobricks in this registry and when the competition is over they add their new parts to the registry.

Synthetic biology brings with it both promise and peril. If it becomes fast, easy and cheap to design and construct benevolent biological entities the same will hold true for malicious biological entities. Synthetic biologists are keenly aware of the risks this technology poses. They also know that the genie is out of the bottle. Endy would like to see synthetic biology follow the path of software and go open-source. His vision is two pronged. Give free access to the DNA for biobricks and educate both hobbyist and professionals alike so they are better equipped to recognize dangerous applications of the technology. Like all disruptive technologies, synthetic biology will push the envelopeof existing social, political and legal systems to respond to the change it will catalyze.

FringeHog Friday Five (links to more info about Synthetic Biology)

Comic Adventures in Synthetic Biology

Sometimes the easiest way to communicate complex ideas is with humor. Nature published a first ever comic: “Adventures in Synthetic Biology”, by Drew Endy, Isadora Deese and the MIT Synthetic Biology Working Group, and illustrated by Chuck Wadey in their special edition on synthetic biology.?

Here’s a video of Drew Endy defining synthetic biology.?

Another Youtube video of Brown University’s IGEM Team talking IGEM.

Life 2.0 Excellent article on synthetic biology from the Economist

OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology and biological engineering.

Every 14 days a language disappears. The Living Tongues Institute estimates that by 2100 more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will become extinct. When a language dies,the history of a culture vanishes - collective knowledge about traditions, ecosystems, religious beliefs.?

National Geographic’s Enduring Voices Project is identifying language “hot spots” - places where languages are in danger of becoming extinct, with the goal of documenting and preserving them. Central Siberia, the Northwest Pacific Plateau, Northern Australia and Siberia are among the areas that have the highest threat of language extinction.

In addition to identifying endangered languages, the project is embarking on a series of expeditions in part to determine how linguistic diversity is linked to biodiversity. According to the project: “Indigenous groups that have interacted closely with the natural world for thousands of years often have profound insights into local lands, plants, animals, and ecosystems-many still undocumented by science. Studying indigenous languages therefore benefits environmental understanding and conservation efforts.”

How to win $1 Million and save the world at the same time

The X-Prize Foundation calls it “revolution through competition”. I call it Super-Size Innovation. What it is: big cash prizes to solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges.

Competition-based innovation isn’t a new concept: in 1773 the British government awarded the Longitude Prize to one John Harrison for creating a method of accurately determining a ship’s longitude, a breakthrough which revolutionized navigation and maritime trade.

Today’s emerging generation of philanthropists are raising the stakes - literally - with a new crop of public “innovation challenges”, all offering large purses for everyday innovators who are able to solve some of our most pressing problems: global warming, space travel, clean water, to name just a few. Although the end-goal is the development of viable solutions, innovation challenges also serve to bring attention to the bottlenecks in scientific research.?

Want to outsource (or crowd-source) your extra brainpower to save the world and make a few bucks in the process? Check out this short-list of innovation challenges:

Google Lunar X Prize: Compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the moon. Caveat: the robot must roam for at least five hundred meters and be able to send video, images, and data back to earth. Prize: $30 million.

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge: Competition for the development and implementation of a solution with significant potential to solve the world’s most pressing problems in the shortest possible time while enhancing the Earth’s ecological integrity. Caveat: submissions must exemplify the trimtab principle. Prize: $100k annual prize.

The Virgin Earth Challenge: Demonstrate a commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth’s climate. Prize: $25 million. Bonus: Weekend on Necker with Sir Richard Branson himself.

Genomics X-Prize: The latest from the folks at the X-Prize Foundation, a competition to be the first team to sequence a human genome in 10 days. Prize: $10 million.

OK, maybe it’s not world changing, but it’s an interesting example of how corporations are outsourcing innovation: Netflix: The Netflix Prize seeks to substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to love a movie based on their movie preferences. Prize: $1 million.

Picking up where I left off yesterday….

I was pleased to see a grassroots example of Designers R Us in action. Animatronics Workshop was the most interesting exhibit in the future of education section. It is collaborative, generative, open-source and DIY the four values that define Designers R Us.?

Animatronics Workshop was the brain child ofPaul and Catherine Diets, a couple of parents who wanted to provide kids with “a chance to experience a significant interdisciplinary project that requires the tight integration of both artistic and technical capabilities”. The workshop, designed as an extracurricular activity, began in the fall of 2006 with 14 children ages 11 -14. Check out a video of their first show called Perspectives, based on the familiar Sunday talk show format.?

Transforming ideas into objects… Up until now 3D printers have been gigantic, extremely expensive machines making them unsuitable for the consumer market. This is about to change. The Desktop Factory 3D printer will hit the market costing $4,995.00 making it within reach of businesses, schools and individuals.?

What I enjoyed was being able to see the machine up close; it reminded me of a microwave, and to hold some of the objects that had been “printed”. They felt substantial, like they would hold up to an average amount of wear and tear. The Desktop Factory uses standard 3D file formats and it has a maximum build volume of 5×5x5 inches. Instead of a laser it uses a halogen light bulb and the feed stock is nylon based power similar to what is used in makeup.?

Think of how cool it would be to print a 3D version of your virtual world objects, your avatar, toys you design! There is a waiting list for the machine which is expected to be available in early 2008. I want one.

I dropped by Wired Magazine’s NextFest over the weekend in LA. Last year’s in NYC was good, so I was looking forward to this one. Like last year, there were interesting technologies and I enjoyed talking with the people behind them. However, I was disappointed by the number of repeats from last year and I missed the main stage presentations like the new vacationauts. In Wired magazine speak, I’d say that 70% of this year’s NextFest was tired and 30% was wired.?

What was wired…

Jeff Hahn and his multi-touch collaboration wall. WOW! I couldn’t wait to meet Jeff and have a go at the multi-touch display. The hi-res images and the intuitive touch display draw you in. You can stretch and shrink images, slide them to another person to manipulate. With one touch you could call up a map and zero in on your destination of choice. I wondered what was behind the screen making it run so I asked Jeffand was surprised to learn that each screen uses one Dell computer to make it sing. For now, Perceptive Pixel’s multi-touch screen is being used by the military, but in the not too distant future Jeff said it will be in schools, universities, workplaces etc.

Zou Ren Ti’s robotic twin Robotic Zou looked real at a distance and up close. People in the crowd tried to interact with him as if he was human. They’d wave their hands in front of his face to see if he would blink and sometimes he did, startling everyone who noticed. His movements weren’t smooth and when he spoke it reminded me of watching Charlie Mc Carthy, Edgar Bergen’s ventriloquist doll, but on whole he was as close to looking human as I’ve seen in a robot. One major caveat, touching his skin caused a great deal of cognitive dissonance. It looked like human skin, but it felt nothing like human skin. It was cold and rubbery.?

Consider this my CliffsNotes version… more tomorrow

Here’s a reason to love Mondays.

Before you check email, before youclick onthe news, before you even THINK aboutlooking atyour crackberry, geta very large latte and watch thisbreaktakingly beautiful video ofmachinma masterRob Wright (aka Robbie Dingo) recreating Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” in Second Life.?

“Watch the World(s)” is not only magical, captivating and visually stunning,it’s mindblowing - especially afterthe caffefine kicks in and you realize that what Dingo is really doing is terraforming the future.

Happy Monday.

FringeHog Friday Five: The Future of Work in a Flat World?

Work is being redefined by shifts in demographics, economic globalization (flat world), and technological advances. How these drivers are reshaping work is uncertain, complex, ambiguous and volatile. However, there are sign posts indicating how the future of work is evolving in the world of work today. Let’s take a look at a few examples.?

HYPER-LOCAL

Today we’re seeing an increasing number of independent free lancers working from home, at their local Starbucks, or gathering in the homes of friends to get a dose of the office social scene. Economics and technology will continue driving this trend and more workers will go hyper-local as Bruce Sterling calls it, when their office is their PDA and their place of work is where ever they happen to be at a given point in time.?

PLACE-BASED

Not all will go this route, obviously large corporations will still exist in 2030 and millions of people will go to the office to work. However, the everyday objects in the office and the buildings themselves will be networked and imbued with informatic capabilities. In short, things in the workplace and the buildings themselves will think.

VIRTUAL WORLDS

By 2030 going to work in a virtual world will be as common as going to work in the real world is today, probably sooner. Dr. Hunter, a law professor from Wharton specializing in virtual worlds; asserts that the globalization of services will happen in virtual worlds. He sees this as one of the most important employment trends in the 21st century. He confidently predicts that his kids (currently grade school age) will work within one or more of these virtual worlds.

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY SAVANTS

Thriving in a flat future will require workers to be savants of social technologies like wikis, reputation technologies, yelp, gnutella, and facebook. Whether they are free lancers or working inside a corporation their ability to catalyze a team and mobilize resources to get the job done will in large part determine their value to their client or boss. Workers that demonstrate resilience, adaptability, cooperative work ethics and strong social networking skills will be highly sought after.?

EMERGING ISSUE

Cosmetic Neurology or Pimping the brain is the use of drugs, surgery, or genetic intervention by healthy people to manipulate mood, memory, concentration, capacity to learn and general ability to cope. How will this impact the workplace? Will workers augment their performance by pimping their brains? Will they be required to disclose this information? Will employers require underperforming employees to pimp their brains? How could this effect performance evaluation?

FringeHog Friday Five on The Future of Work in a Flat World

Making a Living in a Virtual World

The Weird New Ways We Work Business Week Online(slideshow)

The Wiki Workplace

Future of Work Playlist

I was camping last week in the White Mountains national forest, and like most urban-dwellers accustomed to the city’s soundscape, I was struck by how quiet the woods are. In fact, I became acutely aware of the noises around me simply because there were so few: the acoustic buzz of mosquitoes, a few scavenging squirrels, and a particularly industrious woodpecker that was apparently intent on developing the tree next to my tent into riverfront condos.

Like many, I’ve developed a relative immunity to most urban noise. Traffic, honking horns, emergency sirens are all part of the tapestry of city life. Yet according to the World Health Organization (WHO) such noise can actually be deadly, responsible for some 200,000 deaths in Europe alone.

Since 2003 a WHO working group has been studying the burden of disease from environmental noise. Their findings suggest that the long-term effects of exposure to noise such as long-term sleep disturbance and cardiovascular problems may account for 3 percent of deaths in Europe - typically in the form of strokes and heart attacks.

Governments, at least European ones, are starting to take action. According to a recent article by New Scientist, by the end of the year all European cities with populations over 250k will be required to have produced digitized noise maps showing “hotspots” where traffic noise and volume are greatest.

Such a cartography of noise is part of growing trend toward using sensing technology to “make the invisible visible”. Christian Nold’s Biomapping project is creating “emotion maps” of cities, using simple galvanic sensors to highlight and map community places where citizens feel stressed or excited. Similarly, the San Francisco Exploratorium’s Cabspotting project traces the patterns of taxi cabs as they travel throughout the Bay area, revealing subtle economic, social and cultural trends.

As our ability to ?make the invisible visible’ increases through the use of such collaborative cartography, how will our perception of - and ultimately our interaction with - our environment change?